[1][2][3][4] The term Black Dutch appears to have become widely adopted in the Southern Highlands and as far west as Texas in the early 1800s by certain Southeastern families of mixed race ancestry, especially those of Native American descent.
[6] By the late 18th century, numerous free mixed-race families were migrating west, along with white Americans, to the frontiers of Virginia and North Carolina, where racial castes were less strict than in plantation country of the Tidewater.
A large population settled in The Choctaw Territory at Oak Hill to pursue education, specifically literacy to vote and industrial training for employment.
[6] Many triracial isolate ethnic groups in Eastern North America including the Melungeons, Lumbee, Louisiana Redbones, Great Dismal Swamp maroons, and Brass Ankles of South Carolina have similar stories.
Once they owned the land, such families who had escaped forced removal would not admit to their Native American heritage, for fear of losing their property.
After being fully assimilated into the general population years later, these Irish Cherokee mixed-blood descendants, began reclaiming their Native American heritage in the land of the Warrior Mountains, Lawrence County, Alabama.
Today more than 4000 citizens are proud to claim their Native American heritage and are members of the Echota Cherokee tribe.Over time, the term "Black Dutch" migrated with certain families of mixed ancestry from North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee to Missouri and Arkansas, as well as to Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and Oklahoma, where its original meaning became lost.